Taylor Lautner takes the lead without his Twilight buddies in the action-thriller, Abduction. The movie opens with Nathan, played by an often shirtless Taylor Lautner, headed to a party and riding bad boy style on the hood of a car. Never fear, however, all isn’t as it appears. Nathan is actually a pretty shy kid when it comes to talking to the ladies, especially Karen, the object of his crush. At the party, he gets drunk and wakes up on the front lawn. While helping the host clean up, his father picks Nathan up, takes him home and the two engage in an odd fighting battle, to “teach him a lesson.” It isn’t until later in the movie, that we learn why his father was being so hard on him.

One night while working on a school assignment, Nathan discovers that his parents are actually not his parents. Suddenly his world turns upside down. The shy Nathan manages to keep his shirt on and is suddenly thrust into a cat and mouse game looking for the answers that have plagued him his entire life. It turns out that his biological father had stolen secrets from the Soviets and they want to use Nathan as a pawn to get to the father and get the secrets back.
Lautner does an excellent job of showing off his martial arts skills. It was good to see him in another vehicle besides the Twilight saga. Sigourney Weaver plays Nathan’s psychiatrist and his ally while he is on the run.

Abduction was widely panned by most critics, for obvious reasons. The beginning of the movie led movie-watchers to believe that once the movie got going, they would be sitting on the edge of their seats with non-stop action. The only problem is that the action never really materialized on a consistent basis.

Much of the movie left me scratching my head in confusion. Karen, his high school crush, is visiting his house when the action starts and she immediately joins him in his flight from the bad guys. It seems that her parents are conveniently out of the country, but yet she tries to call them later as if they were at home. How did his phsichiatrist know that he was at the hospital and why did she show her face to the camera when it would have been so much easier to stay hidden to avoid detection?

Overall, I think the younger set might enjoy this movie, even if only for the presence of Taylor Lautner.

I give this movie 2 out of 5 stars for the parts that really were exciting.

Details:

Rated PG-13 intense violence, brief language, some sexual content and teen partying
Run time: 106 minutes
Director: John Singleton
Opening weekend: September, 2013



I viewed this movie through my Netflix subscription. I was not compensated to write this review.